


And we can believe it's better this way

by OhOblivion



Category: One Direction
Genre: M/M, Poet!Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 11:47:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1070108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhOblivion/pseuds/OhOblivion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry likes Tuesdays best. Because he’s not too fond of endings, and not to attached to beginnings, either. But he likes Tuesdays because they’re a bit closer to the beginning, and he can still change things if he wants. Start over if he pleases. Besides, he seeks out fresh starts as much as he can, that’s why he’s in New York.<br/>-<br/>Louis is everything that the city is not, and it's a fact that's not lost on Harry. And this boy somehow shows Harry how to see the world for all it's colors, not just the black of his ink</p>
            </blockquote>





	And we can believe it's better this way

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to make this longer, add some more stuff to it. I got lazy, but what else is new.
> 
> The poems aren't mine, unfortunately I lost the links to the originals, but just copy and paste them into google and they should show up x

New York City. The wasteland that’s meant to be the poster child of America’s well being. But instead, a city laced with the metallic remnants of a past hoped to be forgotten. A skyline set aflame with the desire to be free. And among the crowds of worn out faces searching for a light that had once been abandoned was a boy with an undying amount of hope. Filling in the seams between his pieced together limbs, making his blood turn something a little brighter than the scarlet of his lips during December’s foreboding presence.

And maybe his hope is what makes him able to walk the streets of dark grey concrete, the sidewalks smeared and stained with the lives of countless others, permanent etchings on the ground of stone. His name was Harry, and his hope was corrupted with the question of, _what else_? But it was hope all the same. And from time to time he could feel the hope seep through his shoes, running down the cracks of the city; almost like water, seeping into the dirt, saturating the earth with his ability to dream. 

And sometimes the numbness in his fingers reminded him of the way that some things just can’t feel. How the grass continues to grow without a sense of presence, and the trees reach for the sky without wondering, _why_? And perhaps the stars feel lonely. Billion’s of them strewn across the emptiness of forever, just out of reach of each others warmth. 

So he keeps the metal of his pen pressed against his palm, welcoming the ache his gets in his wrist from writing far too long. How he can take the letters of the alphabet, stringing them together on a sheet of nothing. And he describes the world in ways it does not deserve to be described. Its better that way. He’s better off with a notebook full of life, where he can just barely scratch the surface of the city.  
-

Harry likes Tuesdays best. Because he’s not too fond of endings, and not to attached to beginnings, either. But he likes Tuesdays because they’re a bit closer to the beginning, and he can still change things if he wants. Start over if he pleases. Besides, he seeks out fresh starts as much as he can, that’s why he’s in New York.

So yeah, Tuesdays are reserved for him. They’re the one day he allows for himself to bask in the glory of this godforsaken city and what not. He likes to start each Tuesday off differently. Sometimes he’ll stay in bed far longer than he would allow if it were say, Monday (heaven forbid he crawl out of his apartment anywhere after 8:30). Sometimes he’ll watch the sunshine come in through his curtain, the light finding its way around the buildings obstructing him from direct view; Tendrils of gold peeking in through his window, stretching towards him in the grey of his room. 

But more often than not, he pulls on a sweater (usually his white one- depending on if he’s actually bothered himself to walk down to the washing machine situated in the basement, so usually it is) and his faded blue beanie, taking his pen and notebook with him. Not even bothering to lock the door because there’s nothing he has that’s worth stealing. 

He likes writing on Tuesdays, because for some reason the poems written on Tuesday turn out better than the poems from Sunday (but sometimes the ones from Sunday are better than the ones from Friday, but honestly it depends on the weather). He likes the way the world is on Tuesdays, dim light and voices. Voices talking but never quite reaching him, he writes about it all. Harry writes far too much on Tuesdays, but Tuesdays are his days, and he never erases a single word.

_Of my city, the worst men will ever say is this;_  
 _You took children away from the sun and dew,_  
 _And the glimmers that played in the grass under the_  
 _great sky,_  
 _And the reckless rain; you put them between walls_  
 _To work, broken and smothered_

He pours his hope into Tuesday mornings. Because if he has a solid in his life, he thinks it’s better than nothing. Better than wandering throughout New York City letting the crowds push him into the brick walls of the buildings- pushing him until he becomes stone, too. Until he’s part of the city itself, his face a statue of marble, carved into the walkways of someone else’s life. No, Tuesdays are _his_ days, because he doesn’t publish his poems on Tuesdays. 

After his face stings from the cold, and his feet ache from the streets of the city, he takes his notebook to his shift at Barnes & Nobel, because he likes night shifts on Tuesdays. He likes it for the fact that it’s always cold, and he always gets caught for reading (even if he hides the book under the counter, he _always_ gets caught). At least he has Niall, because Niall brings his guitar and plays it when there’s nothing else to do (and there never is when it’s nearly closing time). And Niall buys him a pint if he’s up to it, he always is anyway, talking about college (he’s majoring in Philosophy because it’s Niall, and why the fuck not?) and everything Harry never wanted for himself. But he’s glad Niall has it, he’s glad Niall found his dream amongst the grey of the city. 

Niall loves Harry’s poems (although he complains that he can’t handle all the metaphors-- _why do you have to make it something it’s not, why can’t it just be itself_ ), Harry finds him endearing. Bless him. Sometimes he just grabs the notebook from Harry’s bag, ignoring his half hearted protests. Like tonight, he’s stuck on a short four line stanza Harry had scribbled about the way the city woke up (slowly but then all at once, as if they had been unsure- unwilling, to be the first to step on the street).

“Why don’t you ever publish these ones?” He asks when he’s done, handing the poems back to Harry.

Harry wants to tell him, but it’s his Tuesday thing so he just shrugs, “Don’t feel like it.”

“I don’t feel like writing an essay on the importance of Faith, so maybe we can switch.”

Harry’s glad he has Niall, glad he has an 18-pack of black pens and a seemingly endless supply of notebooks. He’s glad he has the city, with its overbearing buildings, and knack for making you feel like you’re suffocating; because you have to be, here- Suffocating. It’s the only way you can stand to be alone.

_There is loneliness in this world so great_  
 _that you can see it in the slow movement of_  
 _the hands of a clock._  
 _people so tired_  
 _mutilated_  
 _either by love or no love._

Harry thinks that maybe time passes slower if you hide behind words than it would if you faced the world head on. But facing the world head on would require Harry to use the hope he keeps inside himself. The hope that he hides away, reserving for his writing and sometimes Niall if he’s feeling generous. Hope that maybe his words could be true, and the city is filled with something other than the shards of a forgotten life in London, a home where he had become part of the city without even realizing.

But he knows now- knows that you have to move with the roads, not against them. You have to push on, the balls of your feet stepping patterns not unlike the ones your heart beats.

-

Monday is not Tuesday. Monday is a day that Harry pushes to the back of his mind because it’s too bright, and it seems to come too early. But Monday somehow sneaks up on him, tugging at his hair from behind, laughing in his ear.

He meets Louis on a Monday. 

The boy’s all angles. It’s silly, honestly; how the juts of his nose and his chin align with the way his voice seems to pierce through the air with the sole intent of getting you to listen. 

Harry sees him sitting on the curb of the street, coffee in his hand, the steam coiling into the air but disappearing before you can process that it was even there (Harry writes about that, but turns the steam into sadness). And the boy’s staring up at the sky, looking for the tops of the buildings that seem to get lost in the clouds, searching for the sun hidden behind the grey. 

“It’s up there somewhere,” Harry says, sitting next to him, “the sun.”

The boy looks at Harry, takes in this lanky boy who has a notebook on his lap and a pen squeezed between his fingers, “I wouldn’t have known, cheers.”

Harry smiles inside of himself (he can feel another poem in the way this boy has an accent different than his, but alike enough). And it’s strange, to find a piece of home in a place where comfort is not allowed. 

“I’m Harry,”

The boy knocks his knee against Harry’s, smiling at him sideways, “m’Louis,”

“I would have guessed you were English,” Harry says, trying to defend him, “but the coffee threw me off, to be honest.”

The boy turns to look at the mug in his hand, laughing when he remembers it’s even there. He looks around, checking to see if anyone’s watching (of course no one is), “It’s just a prop.”

“A _prop_ ,” Harry echoes, a giggle bubbling in the back of his throat.

“You know?” Louis says, waving around his free hand, “when in Rome, right?”

“Hardly the same,” Harry challenges, “It’s a completely different place, really.”

“This isn’t Rome?” 

“Sadly, no.”

“Well shit, mate. I’ve been here for months thinking I was absorbing the Italian culture,” Louis frowns, looking at the people passing by as if he’d never noticed them.

Harry laughs at that, a real laugh, not a nervous giggle; it catches him off guard, the way this boy he’s only been talking to for no more than five minutes has made him _laugh_. The vulnerability of Harry’s stature makes him want to retreat back into the throng of people passing by on the sidewalk, but Louis has his elbow rested on Harry’s knee and the intimacy of their position anchors him to this spot, this moment. 

They’re quiet for a little bit, Louis drinking his coffee (Harry calls him out on his earlier bluff, and Louis surrenders with a shrug), and Harry thinking of all the different angles of this morning and how each one of them could have a different story. He thinks about how this boy resting beside him, drinking coffee like a proper New Yorker, could have a lot of angles too- not just on his face. 

Harry wants to know why Louis is here, miles from England, but the question is too personal, too invested. Harry doesn’t want to invest in this boy who drinks coffee but longs for tea, who has eyes the color of Tuesday mornings and a smile just as bright. Because investing means caring and Harry doesn’t care, he can’t afford to care because that makes you vulnerable. And he’d rather die than be vulnerable in New York City.

“Could I steal some of that?” Harry asks after a moment, gesturing to the almost empty coffee cup Louis has clutched in-between his hands. Louis looks at him for a moment, trying to read Harry’s expression, looking for any trace of sarcasm (there’s a bit but it’s completely harmless, honestly). He hands the cup over anyway (despite the fact they’re mostly strangers) and Harry lets the latte drip hot and slow down his throat, warming him up from the inside out. 

They talk about the pros and cons of tea, Louis arguing enthusiastically, waving his hands around and almost knocking a young girl in the face. Harry can’t find any pro’s that make tea any more significant than coffee, but Louis argues that tea keeps him tied to his British roots.

“That’s a load of shit, mate,” Harry counters, “If you moved across the ocean, you have to accept the fact that coffee is the way we, American’s, do things.”

Louis waves him off before pulling his sweater sleeves further over his pale fingers, “you have no sense of British Nationalism, young Harold.”

Harry scoffs, digging his fingers into Louis’ side earning him a pinch on the arm. It’s easy, to spend their morning on the sidewalk, blocking the steady stream of traffic that’s happening around them. They’re almost numb, the concrete absorbing the cold of the air easily; sending it up through their limbs instead, dispelling a sort of heaviness into their toes that is only defrosted by their easy banter. 

And then before Harry realizes it, it’s almost 10:30 and he has to make his way to the Barnes & Nobel if he wants to actually keep his job and be able to make rent. Louis gets up before Harry though, standing up and stretching his back out with an exhale of breath.

Harry stands up, too, feeling silly for sitting on the curb by himself. It hits him then how small Louis is, the top of his head only barely reaching Harry’s chin. He tries not to laugh, but Louis can see the amusement dancing in Harry’s eyes.

“What?” He asks, moving his empty coffee cup from his right hand to his left.

“Nothing,” Harry grins, “you’re just _really_ small.”

“Oh fuck _off_ ,” Louis groans. Harry thinks he probably gets that a lot, comments on his size. It’s endearing though, definitely endearing. And there’s something about a small British boy who doesn’t quite fit his name that’s worthy of a poem (maybe even two).

“No,” Harry frowns, not getting why being small puts Louis off, “It’s a good thing. Very ironic.”

“Oh? How so?”

Harry debates how he could answer it, but he doesn’t say what he wants because telling Louis, _“because you have a big personality, and it’s ironic because it’s fit into this tiny boy who’s endearing and smiles too big but it’s okay because I like this small boy with the too big personality,”_ , is probably too much for their first encounter. 

“It’s cute,” Harry shrugs, reveling in the pink of Louis’ cheeks that has nothing to do with the colder than-it-should-be weather. 

Louis doesn’t say anything back. Instead he looks at Harry warily, before turning the corner of his mouth up in a smirk.

“I’ll be seeing you, Harry,” and it’s not a question, but a statement. He says it like it’s a fact, a promise, which he intends on keeping. Harry has no idea how Louis thinks they’re going to keep in touch, because he never sees the same person more than once. Because the moment that they disappear into the crowd of people, they become a memory.

It’s an experience in which Harry is all too familiar with, being left behind with only his poems to convey their presence. It’s something he swore to never let happen again when he moved to America, he would not be left a fool. 

“Doubt it,” Harry answers, his sarcastic statement laced with something that could only be interpreted as truth. 

Louis hums something that could be agreement- it could also be his buzzing phone which he picks up moments later, walking away from Harry without even looking back. 

Harry’s about to turn back around and try and write a few poems before he decides that he seriously _needs_ to go to work, but then Louis does look back and he has this grin on his face that looks a bit like when the sun sets over the city skyline. 

And standing there on the sidewalk, surrounded by building and people, Louis looks radiant. Harry thinks that Louis could rival the shine of the city, and his fingers twitch around his pen, longing to put it on paper.

Harry gives Louis a nod and doesn’t go to work, because Niall wasn’t going to be there and he’ll get paid anyway. He writes instead, the city streets seeming to push against the pads of his fingers as it continues to move around him. And sitting there, he seems like New York is fitting itself around him, adapting to him and his poems and his pens and every little crooked angle he has. 

And it might be too much for Harry to be writing about Louis, because Harry doesn’t write about people, he writes about _things_ \- emotions. But every word spouts another, and he thinks that the poems are writing themselves at this point. 

Besides, he’s putting Louis down on paper (adding him to the life he’s fit in the spirals), so that he won’t have need for the real thing. He doesn’t _need_ to see Louis again, because his poems are enough. It’s better this way, the paper barrier.

(He’s lying to himself and knows it when he wakes up the next day)

-

Harry returns to his usual schedule of writing, working, writing some more, and then going to bars and open mic nights to share his poems. The schedule he has for himself is something that he’s stretched over time, wearing down the rough edges, plastering it to his skin. And it’s _good_ for him, good for the way he has to get used to New York a little bit at a time. 

He sells a few poems too, most of them about Louis (all of them actually), and it’s a good week. A good week if he ignores the fact that he thinks he sees piercing blue eyes on every other block. Pretends he doesn’t recognize dainty hands clutching coffee cups, thinking if they hold it tight enough it’ll turn into tea. (Harry may or may not be going crazy, but at least he’s going crazy in NYC).

And Harry previously had a thing for keeping to himself, and he didn’t know why, he just figured it wouldn’t be comfortable to have his heart and mind cracked open. So he wore a shield of notebooks and paper and carefully placed words and it’s enough to keep him on his feet, until now all of a sudden it’s not and his shield doesn’t work anymore (it’s caved in, morphed into a different shape and now his poems transform into the enemy, into soppy love notes, and even though it’s not written there in black and white- it’s in between the lines and every letter seems to scream out _lovelovelove._ )

By the time Niall and him end up working the same shift, it’s been a week and he’s all out of poems to write. He actually ran out three days ago, and had moped around Central Park, sprawling out on the grass hoping that he’d fall asleep and wake up when it was warmer (Instead he got yelled at by some police officer and acquired grass stains on his arse).

“Do you have anything new?” Niall asks, both of them standing at the front desk. And Niall forgot his guitar today, probably because it’s fucking Monday and also because it’s been a dull week. He’s been asking for Harry’s notebook for a full hour, claiming that Harry’s stories are the only things intellectually challenging he ever faces, and everything else is too damn easy-- _I’m just a generally philosophical person, this major is just a bit of review, honestly_.

“No,” Harry huffs indignantly, tugging his beanie further down onto his forehead. He didn’t want to show Niall his poems about Louis, because that led to explaining, and he didn’t have a good explanation. And Niall would question him until he knew every detail. Probably.

Niall looks at him warily, before trying to sneak his hand into Harry’s leather bag. Harry isn’t blind, and besides the bag is practically in his lap, so there was nothing sneaky about Niall’s sweater covered arm trying to grab something out of it. 

“ _Harry_ ,” Niall begs, “Please, I wanna see.”

“Yeah well I want a better job and a funnier friend.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“Neither is minimum wage.”

Harry leaves Niall to restock the Auto-Biography section, and that job alone makes him question the books that the inhabitants of New York are reading (who even reads auto-biographies anyway?). He never has to restock the poetry section, and _that_ fact is troubling enough. 

“Are you following me?”

The voice is familiar. It was the sort of voice that Harry would be able to pinpoint exactly; the type of voice that had wrapped coils around his wrists, tying him down to the pavement, onto the concrete. 

He turns around, confirming the fact that the thumping in his ears had derived from his muse- His muse whom was _here_ , in the two story Barnes & Noble _during_ Harry’s shift. 

“Louis,” Harry says (but it’s more like a breath, an accidental part of his lips that lets out something other than his voice and Harry feels a little bit betrayed by himself). 

“You didn’t answer my question,” Louis points out, eyeing Harry apprehensively, “are you following me? Because if so, my name is not actually Louis.”

“No I’m not following you,” Harry answers, “You’re the one who’s at my work, _Louis_.”

Louis holds up his left hand in surrender (his right hand holding a book, and looking closer Harry can see it’s a poetry book- the classics to be exact). Louis puts it back on the shelf, leaning against the wood, “I saw you through the window.”

“Oh really?” Harry hums, “and you decided to come in and, instead of talking to me, go straight to the E.E Cummings section?”

Louis takes a better look at the shelf he’s leaning against, “well, I thought you were the poetic type,” he shrugs, “To be honest, I was going to sprawl these books across the floor and get naked, laying amongst the stanza’s waiting for you to appear. But I decided that the chance of the blonde lad finding me instead of you was too risky.”

Harry snorts, picturing Niall returning to the front counter bright red, muttering about a psycho with his cock out in the Poetry section asking employees to _draw him like their French girls_. Although he would get a kick out of it, he’d rather not deal with that on a Monday. 

“Too bad,” Harry tsks, trying not to look too disappointed.

“Maybe next time?” Louis grins, patting Harry’s arm on his way past. 

Louis starts towards the door, wrapping his knit scarf tighter around his neck in preparation for the blast of cold he would get once he got outside. And suddenly, Harry knows that this five minute encounter wouldn’t be enough, and there was no way he’d get a good poem out of this (okay maybe he could if he really tried, but that’s beside the point and he really wants to know Louis a little more than he does now). He really wants to know what Louis’ favorite hour of the day is, wants to know what his favorite sound is. Is it the sound of rain hitting the tin of the metal buildings they surround themselves with? Or maybe it’s the sound of the easy scratching of pens on paper?

And although watching Louis leave was a grand sight all in its own, he wants a little bit more than a great view of this boy’s backend, and the best way to get that was over coffee. 

“Hey, Louis,” Harry calls out, stepping towards him, “I don’t know if you have any plans, but I do know that you hate coffee, and I think, if you’d let me, I could change your mind? About your hatred of coffee, I mean.”

Louis looks slightly amused, running his fingers through his fringe, “That might be a bit hard, mate. I can’t fucking stand coffee…”

Harry holds his breath, or really the air in his lungs solidifies, staying in place because it can’t bear to leave the safety of his chest.

“… but yeah, I think that you might make up for whatever shit cup of latte you try and make me drink.”

Harry thinks his face cracks then, a fissure forming under his left eye, running down to his jaw. And through this crack, his hope shines. Bright, brilliant, ever present. 

-

Harry decides that Louis really doesn’t like coffee. It was an attempt made in vain- trying to get Louis to enjoy coffee instead of choking it down for the sole purpose of keeping him awake- and after Harry’s second try, he gives up.

“I surrender!” Harry exclaims, pushing the mug away from him and Louis, “You are a disgrace of a New Yorker, _Lewis_.”

Louis shrugs, stealing a bit of Harry’s cinnamon bun and looking a little too smug, “I am a man who cannot be changed, Harold. Once I chose something, I stick with it! A great quality, to be certain.”

“Unbelievable,” Harry says, ignoring Louis and opting to think of different ways he could _make_ Louis like coffee. 

“I usually get that,” Louis smirks, the gold of his skin shining even brighter in the dim light of the little café. 

“So what do you do, then?” Louis asks, tilting back in his chair two legs off the ground. 

“Nothing really,” Harry replies, keeping his hands wrapped around his coffee. It’s not at all lost on him, the understanding that Louis is just another piece of the city. The knowledge that this boy came from the crowd of people- fringe and all- and into Harry’s store, into Harry’s mind, even. 

Louis watched Harry carefully, his eyes asking questions even though his lips are pressed tightly together. And _okay_. 

Louis gets up suddenly, gathering his jacket and scarf from the table, unable to sit still when his hands are itching to thread themselves into the waves of Harry’s hair. “Come on Harry, lets go roam around, the smell of coffee is absolute nauseating.”

Harry pushes himself away from the table, the wooden legs of the chair moving against the wooden floors of the little coffeeshop that Harry had brought Louis to. And only then does Harry realize that he’s following this unknown boy through the city, through the city he had written off as forbidden. A place where he was allowed to look, but not touch. 

Harry was a bit of a look but don’t touch person. Everything was always off limits to him, out of bounds. But somehow New York’s lights- and all its glamour and glory- had showed him the difference between London and where he is now.

“Are you coming or not, curly?” 

And yeah Harry’s following him, because Louis seems like he already has this place figured out.

-


End file.
